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Pausing Smart Collections

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Dean0178

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Oct 13, 2016
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BW, Germany
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So, I've read up on a few workflows (including Workflow smart collections – John Beardsworth) and come up with a system that seems to work pretty good so far. It seems all good on paper, rather... but, I'm a little confused by maybe the intended usage of some of the smart collections.

A "No Title" collection is fine... You open the collection, give an image a title, hit enter and voila: the image has a title and is removed from the collection. And having a smart collection for "No cropping" for instance which contains photos that have no cropping applied sounds like a great idea!

But in practice it's a little frustrating.

Say you have 46 images which need cropping. You click on the collection and start to work on the first image. BUT, as soon as you do anything crop-wise (I usually first enforce a 2x3/4x6 AR), the photo is then removed from the collection and the photo disappears as it no longer meets the requirements of the collection, leaving the photo technically cropped, but maybe I wasn't done! :)

I was wondering if there was a way to say, PAUSE, the rules processing so that I can continue cropping images. The same issue crops up (pun intended) having a "Has Edits = false" collection. Are these smart collections really just a way to see HOW MANY images need cropped/editted? Of course, I could add a "needsCropping" or "needsDevelop" keyword and key off of that, but it would be nice if there was a more automated way.
 
Unfortunately, there isn't. One way would be to select all images in the smart collection and add them to the Quick Collection. Then edit while in there. Another is indeed to add a special keyword, or use a color label, and add that to the criteria of the smart collection.
 
I use the crop, edits and other items to propose images that might be final. I came at this by working in reverse....
 
Unfortunately, there isn't. One way would be to select all images in the smart collection and add them to the Quick Collection. Then edit while in there. Another is indeed to add a special keyword, or use a color label, and add that to the criteria of the smart collection.
That's not a bad idea -- and maybe I'll finally remember the shortcut key for empty quick collection if I start using it more!
 
I think Johan has an excellent solution.
The criteria needs to be two parts. LR does not know when you are finished.
So your criteria needs to be:
{Images that are not cropped}
{Images where cropping is not finished.}

You decide when you are finished. When you are finished, add the image to a static collection for cropped images. So the criteria becomes:
{Cropped}{is not true}
{Collection}{does not contain}{(the name of my cropped collection)}
 
Another method is to use the Any Filter plug-in. It includes a option to filter on any defined Collection or Smart Collection. This will work in a ad-hock fashion without having to make any special rules in advance.

I have defined a keyboard shortcut (Ctl-F) to quickly run Any Filter.

-louie
 
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